


Love...is a magnifying glass.

by rabbitinthewoods



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, and a bit of gentle smut at the end, and romantic happenings, general cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitinthewoods/pseuds/rabbitinthewoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love makes you blind. Love makes you stupid. Love leaves your head in the clouds.</p>
<p>That is not his experience.</p>
<p>“Ori,” he whines.</p>
<p>Ori just laughs. “Kiss me.”</p>
<p>“I’m trying!”</p>
<p>“Kiss me,” he says again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love...is a magnifying glass.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ibijau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibijau/gifts).



> Written for a fluff-starved Tagath. Critique and criticism always welcome, especially as this is my first time writing more explicit romance. I am so sorry if the smut is terrible. Argh.

Kíli has heard it said that love makes you blind to all else. That is not his experience.

Love...is a magnifying glass.

Here, look.

Here is Erebor. It is still a bit of a mess, but the particular mess that Kíli is concerned with right now is one of the upper tunnels in a ruby mine. The tunnels above it are filled with debris, and many below it are collapsed. This would not normally bother Kíli. Normally, he would just send a miner corps to look at it. Except...

Well. Magnifying glass.

He has read up on what he can about structural integrity. Perhaps it’s not much, in the grand scheme of things, but it helps. Combine it with the natural instincts of a dwarf for rock and the vast experience of the foreman beside him, and he is much better equipped than he could be.

He’s still not sure what’s wrong though.

“Would it help to clear the tunnels above?” He asks.

The foreman, Njördr, tugs a bit at his beard. It is subtle, but Kíli has learnt that it means the dwarf is anxious.

“It would,” Njördr says, “but it would take many hands and likely machines.  I would not like to risk putting such weight up there if this tunnel cannot hold the strain.”

“You think it might collapse.”

“Aye.”

“What of the tunnels below? Could we clear them, strengthen them?”

“Aye, we could.”

Kíli looks at Njördr. A few months ago, he would have thought this agreement final, would have pushed to begin work immediately. But now, despite Njördr’s genial tone, Kíli can see his doubt in the way he worries at his coats fastenings, in the way he will not quite look at Kíli.

“But.” Kíli says.

Njördr looks at him, and heaves a whistling sigh. “But any disturbance of the rock below might make the rock above unstable.”

“Ah.” Kíli thinks through all the books he read, all of Bofur’s chat of his craft. Ori’s gentle and throwaway reminder, as he helped Kíli find what he needed in the library. ‘Listen to the foreman’, he’d said, ‘they know the rock better than they know their own skins.’

Alright.

“What do you suggest, Njördr?”

Njördr squints at him, then makes a rumbling sound that may be a laugh, and fires off a series of ideas with Kíli as his sounding board.

Later, when he is back in the library, washed clean of soot and in new clothes, he finds Ori in a corner. He waits until the other dwarf has finished the section of text he is reading and looks up.

“Did it help?” He asks Kíli. “The research?”

Kíli drags a seat over and buries his nose into the area just below Ori’s ear, one arm flung across the back of Ori’s seat and the other looped around his middle, bracketing him in Kíli’s embrace.

“Course it did,” he says, “you’ve always had an eye for details, _lananubukhsuh_.”

* * *

Kíli’s father, when he was still alive, once sat both his boys down and told them that sometimes love makes you stupid. Kíli likes to think he’s outgrown that.

Love, he hopes, has broadened his mind.

“Ori,” he says, “Ori, help.”

Ori wanders over to where Kíli is bent over the kitchen table, treatises and complex engineering books and detailed histories laid out before him. He runs a hand through Kíli’s bedraggled hair, somehow avoiding getting caught in the tangles. He perches on the arm of Kíli’s chair, and makes a cursory inspection of the materials on the tabletop.

“Hallgrim Wormwreaker again?” He asks.

Kíli leans into Ori’s side, pleased with the hand carding through his hair and with Ori’s closeness. The clothes the other dwarf is wearing are soft and freshly laundered, smelling faintly of leather and lavender. Despite their thickness, they cannot hide the bulk and muscle underneath. Or the firm lines of a chest, or the memory of puckered scars, or callused hands, or that delightful patch of hair just above Ori’s waistline that grows curlier than the rest.

He should just abandon this project. There are more fun things he could be doing.

“Yes,” he says instead. “Hallgrim Wormwreaker.”

Ori chuckles. “Will tea help?”

“Yes,” he says, then “no,” when Ori makes to pull away. He wraps his arms around Ori’s frame, and pulls him further onto the chair. “Stay. Tea later.”

“Perhaps tea is a must, if you’ve stopped speaking in full sentences.”

Kíli just grumbles nonsense sounds into Ori’s side. “Help.”

Ori acquiesces, and looks more thoughtfully over the books and papers spread before them. Kíli is trying to research one of Hallgrim’s less famous – but perhaps more impressive – dragon slayings. Many records of it have been lost, or conflict with one another. He wants to get the full and truthful story; it’s a birthday present for his mother, a reminder of stories from her childhood. There is a quiet and altogether peaceful five minutes where Kíli hides his face in Ori’s willing flesh and Ori murmurs to himself about cave walls and probabilities and angles of descent.

Finally the sounds of papers rasping against each other stops, and Kíli can feel Ori’s gaze on the crown of his head.

“You think she came in from the ceiling?” He asks.

It is, Kíli admits, an odd notion. But he believes it’s true – or at least truer than any other version he can find. He tells Ori this, head tilted up to catch the other’s eyes, arms still clinging softly to his frame.

Ori hums, then looks curiously into some middle distance Kíli is not party to. Not yet.

“I just – I can’t quite get the maths.” Kíli says. “For how she would have lowered herself from the upper chamber through the labyrinth of tunnels to the main nest.”

Ori hums again, then nods. His gaze sweeps down to take in Kíli.

“Alright,” he says, “let me just get some paper and a quill.”

The revised account is finished a full week before his mother’s birthday, complete with diagrams and complex equations and detailed estimations of what equipment must have been used. On the day Kíli gives it all to his mother – from the both of them, he is quick to say, and she gives them both kisses and wide, radiant smiles – he gives Ori a small clasp for his ear, made in the shape of a dragon’s tooth.

Ori blushes a little when he sees it. “You’re foolish sometimes,” he mumbles.

“Only to balance you out,” Kíli replies.

* * *

Bilbo is quite fond of romance stories, Kíli has discovered. Ones where couples get swept up in each other, become completely disconnected from reality. End up with their ‘head in the clouds’, as Bilbo says. It’s all very well, Kíli supposes, but perhaps a bit unrealistic.

Love has always grounded him.

Ori has led him to a small chamber, a study room, out of the way and discreet. Kíli is very, very glad. He’s had an awful day, and needs to vent.

“Bloody elves,” he starts.

Ori slips his hands up Kíli’s arms, and rests them on either side of his face. “Stop thinking about elves,” he says, eyes sparkling and mouth open in a wide, tempting smile. “Kiss me.”

Kíli doesn’t hesitate. He steps forward but two inches, and Ori’s hands guide his face just a little to the right so their noses nudge each other and their lips brush fleetingly. Kíli grasps for a handhold, finding a grip on Ori’s overcoat, fisting it and trying to bring their frames together.

“Ori,” he whines.

Ori just laughs. “Kiss me.”

“I’m trying!”

And he is, but Ori keeps giving just a teasing press of lips before pulling back, tugging Kíli with him. He pulls until his back meets a wall, and then his gentle leading becomes a demanding yank, so Kíli becomes pressed flush against him.

“Kiss me,” he says again.

Kíli surges forward, finding Ori’s lips, and _oh._ Ori is a lamp to him, a bright beacon that he could find in the most cloying darkness. To touch that light feels like whipping an arm through a fire – hot, dangerous, but not enough to hurt him. Like teasing a friendly dragon.

Kíli bites Ori’s lip, then moves his way down his jaw, to his ear, his neck. His hands grasp and squeeze and pull, yet always holding. Holding Ori close, pressing them together until a wisp of air could not find a gap between them. The smell of leather is stronger at Ori’s neck, and Kíli nips at the skin, trying to get a taste.

Ori has moved his hands from Kíli’s face, and while one is holding fiercely to a shoulder the other is tangled in Kíli’s hair. When Kíli bites too hard he pulls, when Kíli is too light he twists. And always he talks. His speech is a balm, a rock for Kíli to plant his feet on. The rest of the mountain may demand his attention and drain him and fill him full of fevered, strained energy, but here his soul can be still. He can just _be_. Thoughts of elves fall away, thoughts of trade agreements and flooded mines and testy ambassadors vanish until there is just the sweat beneath his tongue, the hip beneath his hand and the wonderful words curling in his ear.

A tongue flicks against the shell of his ear. “ _Men lananubukhs menu_.” Ori says.

Kíli’s hips judder and shift, and he cannot help but whine. His face is buried in Ori’s neck, his hands buried beneath the folds of clothes, and Mahal it is not enough.

Ori pulls his face up, licks a stripe across his cheek and into his mouth. “Come on, Kíli. Come on.” A hand slides down Kíli’s back and forces his hips forward again. “More.”

Kíli gasps, then rolls his hips forward. Ori rewards him with a kiss, and another, and another, until there is nothing but more friction, more flesh, more Ori, more, more.

“ _Men lananubukhs menu_ ,” he whispers, when Ori lies twisting beneath him, around him. “ _Men lananubukhs menu, men lananubukhs menu_.”

**Author's Note:**

> 'Lananubukhsuh' - khuzdul for 'My love', if I've got it right.  
> 'Men lananubukhs menu' - khuzdul for 'I love you'.
> 
> Got them both from here; http://bluecloakedbowandarrow.tumblr.com/post/39677082130/ooc


End file.
